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Showing 2261 - 2280 of 5103 items
By Sandeep Jauhar. 2018
The bestselling author of Intern and Doctored tells the story of the thing that makes us tick For centuries, the…
human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As the cardiologist and bestselling author Sandeep Jauhar shows in Heart: A History, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that have changed the way we live. Deftly alternating between key historical episodes and his own work, Jauhar tells the colorful and little-known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal our most vital organ. He introduces us to Daniel Hale Williams, the African American doctor who performed the world’s first open heart surgery in Gilded Age Chicago. We meet C. Walton Lillehei, who connected a patient’s circulatory system to a healthy donor’s, paving the way for the heart-lung machine. And we encounter Wilson Greatbatch, who saved millions by inventing the pacemaker—by accident. Jauhar deftly braids these tales of discovery, hubris, and sorrow with moving accounts of his family’s history of heart ailments and the patients he’s treated over many years. He also confronts the limits of medical technology, arguing that future progress will depend more on how we choose to live than on the devices we invent. Affecting, engaging, and beautifully written, Heart: A History takes the full measure of the only organ that can move itself.By Maristella Svampa. 2018
Historia a la vez familiar y social, vinculada al avance del fracking en Allen, Río Negro, sobre las tierras que…
los inmigrantes habían transformado al plantar peras y manzanas. En 2011, en la chacra del abuelo de la autora -conocida militante social y ambientalista- asoma una torre de petróleo. Una historia familiar que mezcla la literatura, la sociología y la filosofía con la militancia socioambiental. Cuando don Alfredo vio que una torre asomaba por entre los álamos, se preguntó con sorpresa: "¿Qué hace eso tan cerca del pueblo?". Nadie se había animado a decirle que los administradores de esas tierras -parte de su familia- habían firmado un contrato con una empresa norteamericana para instalar, entre los perales y manzanos de la chacra que había sido de su padre, una plataforma de explotación de hidrocarburos. Eso sucedió en 2011, y a partir de entonces las plantaciones de frutales empezaron a ser desmontadas, y los pozos de extracción de petróleo y de gas proliferaron en Allen, en el corazón del Alto Valle de Río Negro. De manera asordinada pero vertiginosa, esa localidad se convirtió, junto con Vaca Muerta, en cabecera de playa del fracking en la Argentina. Don Alfredo es el padre de Maristella Svampa, que nació en esas tierras y que, de pronto, vio cómo su familia, la comunidad donde se crió y sus actividades de reconocida militante socioambiental en el país y el exterior se entrelazaban en un doloroso y acuciante primer plano. Chacra 51 es la narración íntima de esa experiencia, pero también, y sobre todo, es un llamado urgente a enfrentar el avance de una actividad que, detrás del proclamado "progreso", impone daños irreversibles en un planeta castigado y en la vida que sostiene.By Jane Stern. 2003
Five years ago Jane Stern was a walking encyclopedia of panic attacks, depression, and hypochondria. Her marriage of more than…
thirty years was suffering, and she was virtually immobilized by fear and anxiety. As the daughter of parents who both died before she was thirty, Stern was terrified of illness and death, and despite the fact that her acclaimed career as a food and travel writer required her to spend a great deal of time on airplanes, she suffered from a persistent fear of flying and severe claustrophobia. But a strange thing happened one day on a plane that was grounded at the Minneapolis airport for six horrible, foodless, airless hours. A young man on a trip with his classmates suddenly became dizzy and pale because he hadn't eaten in many hours, and there was no food left on the plane. Without thinking about it, Jane gave him the candy bar that she had in her purse. A short time later the color had returned to his cheeks, the boy was laughing again with his friends, and Jane realized that this one small act of kindness--helping another person who was suffering--had provided her with comfort and a sense of well-being.It was shortly thereafter that this fifty-two-year-old writer decided to become an emergency medical technician, eventually coming to be known as Ambulance Girl. Stern tells her story with great humor and poignancy, creating a wonderful portrait of a middle-aged, Woody Allen-ish woman who was "deeply and neurotically terrified of sick and dead people," but who went out into the world to save other people's lives as a way of saving her own. Her story begins with the boot camp of EMT training: 140 hours at the hands of a dour ex-marine who took delight in presenting a veritable parade of amputations, hideous deformities, and gross disasters. Jane--overweight and badly out of shape--had to surmount physical challenges like carrying a 250-pound man seated in a chair down a dark flight of stairs. After class she did rounds in the emergency room of a local hospital, where she attended to a schizophrenic kickboxer who had tried to kill his mother that morning and a stockbroker who was taken off the commuter train to Manhattan with delirium tremens so bad it killed him. Each call Stern describes is a vignette of human nature, often with a life in the balance. From an AIDS hospice to town drunks, yuppie wife beaters to psychopaths, Jane comes to see the true nature and underlying mysteries of a town she had called home for twenty years. Throughout the book we follow her as she gets her sea legs and finally bonds with the burly, handsome firefighters who become her colleagues. At the end, she is named the first woman officer of the department--a triumph we joyously share with her.Ambulance Girl is an inspiring story by a woman who found, somewhat late in life, that "in helping others I learned to help myself." It is a book to be treasured and shared.From the Hardcover edition.By Chris Turney. 2017
“The Antarctic Factor: if anything can go wrong, it will. It's basically Murphy's Law on steroids…” —Chris Turney On Christmas…
Eve 2013, off the coast of East Antarctica, an abrupt weather change trapped the Shokalskiy— the ship carrying earth scientist Chris Turney and seventy-one others involved in the Australasian Antarctic Expedition—in a densely packed armada of sea ice, 1400 miles from civilization. With the ship's hull breached and steerage lost, the wind threatened to drive the vessel into the frozen continent, smashing it to pieces. If nearby floating icebergs picked up speed, they could cause a devastating collision, leaving little time to abandon ship and potentially creating an environmental disaster. The forecast offered no relief—a blizzard was headed their way. As Turney chronicles his modern-day ordeal, he revisits famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's harrowing Antarctic expedition almost a century prior. His ship, Endurance, was trapped and ultimately lost to the ice, forcing Shackleton and his men to fight for survival on a vast and treacherous icescape for two years. Turney also draws inspiration from Douglas Mawson, whose Antarctic explorations were equally legendary. But for Turney the stakes were even higher— for unlike Shackleton or Mawson, he had his wife and children with him. Yet there was another key difference: Shackleton and Mawson were completely cut off; Turney’s expedition was connected to the outside world through Twitter, YouTube, and Skype. Within hours, the team became the focus of a media storm, and an international rescue effort was launched to reach the stranded ship. But could help arrive in time to avert a tragedy? A taut 21st-century survival story, Iced In is also an homage to Shackleton, Mawson, and other scientific explorers who embody the human spirit of adventure, joy in discovery, and will to live.By Pamela Munster. 2018
A practical yet personal guide to the medical and emotional facets of breast cancer, from a woman who’s made her…
living researching the disease—and lived through it herself A leading oncologist at the University of California San Francisco, Dr. Pamela Munster has advised thousands of women on how to deal with the life-altering diagnosis of breast cancer. But when she got a call saying that her own mammogram showed “irregularities,” she found herself experiencing a whole new side of the disease she thought she was an expert in. Weaving together her personal story with her team’s groundbreaking research on the BRCA gene—responsible for not only breast cancer but also for many other inherited cancers affecting both women and men—Twisting Fate is an inspiring guide to living with BRCA mutations. With authority, insight, and compassion, Dr. Munster uses her voice to create a safe space for genuine healing and honesty in a world otherwise dominated by fear.By Albert Einstein, Alan Harris. 2009
His name is synonymous with "genius," but these essays by the renowned physicist and scholar are accessible to any reader.…
In addition to outlining the core of relativity theory in everyday language, Albert Einstein presents fascinating discussions of other scientific fields to which he made significant contributions. The Nobel Laureate also profiles some of history's most influential physicists, upon whose studies his own work was based.Assembled during Einstein's lifetime from his speeches and essays, this book marks the first presentation to the wider world of the scientist's accomplishments in the field of abstract physics. Along with relativity theory, these articles examine the methods of theoretical physics, principles of research, and the concept of scientific truth. Einstein's speeches to audiences at Columbia University and the Prussian Academy of Science appear here, along with his insightful observations on such giants of science as Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, and others.By Gary Ferguson. 2014
The nature writing of Gary Ferguson arises out of intimate experience. He trekked 500 miles through Yellowstone to write Walking…
Down the Wild and spent a season in the field at a wilderness therapy program for Shouting at the Sky. He journeyed 250 miles on foot for Hawks Rest and followed through the seasons the first fourteen wolves released into Yellowstone National Park for The Yellowstone Wolves. But nothing could prepare him for the experience he details in his new book.The Carry Home is both a moving celebration of the outdoor life shared between Ferguson and his wife Jane, who died tragically in a canoeing accident in northern Ontario in 2005, and a chronicle of the mending, uplifting power of nature. Confronting his unthinkable loss, Ferguson set out to fulfill Jane's final wish: the scattering of her ashes in five remote, wild locations they loved and shared. The act of the carry home allows Ferguson the opportunity to ruminate on their life together as well as explore deeply the impactful presence of nature in all of our lives.Theirs was a love borne of wild places, and The Carry Home offers a powerful glimpse into how the natural world can be a critical prompt for moving through cycles of immeasurable grief, how bereavement can turn to wonder, and how one man rediscovered himself in the process of saying goodbye.By Larry Nielsen. 1984
It's easy to feel powerless in the face of big environmental challenges—but we need inspiration more than ever. With political…
leaders who deny climate change, species that are fighting for their very survival, and the planet's last places of wilderness growing smaller and smaller, what can a single person do? InNature's Allies, Larry Nielsen uses the stories of conservation pioneers to show that through passion and perseverance, we can each be a positive force for change.In eight engaging and diverse biographies—John Muir, Ding Darling,Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Chico Mendes,Billy Frank Jr., Wangari Maathai, and Gro Harlem Brundtland—we meet individuals who have little in common except that they all made a lasting mark on our world. Some famous and some little known to readers, they spoke out to protect wilderness, wildlife, fisheries, rainforests, and wetlands. They fought for social justice and exposed polluting practices. They marched, wrote books, testified before Congress, performed acts of civil disobedience, and, in one case, were martyred for their defense of nature.Nature's Alliespays tribute to them all as it rallies a new generation of conservationists to follow in their footsteps.These vivid biographies are essential reading for anyone who wants to fight for the environment against today's political opposition. Nature's Allies will inspire students, conservationists, and nature lovers to speak up for nature and show the power of one person to make a difference.By John O'Brien, Dana Meachen Rau. 2015
From the palaces of Austria to the mirrored halls of Versailles, Marie Antoinette led a charmed life. She was born…
into royalty in 1755 and married the future king of France at age 15. By 21 she ascended to the throne and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle of masquerade balls, sky-high wigs, and extravagant food. But her taste for excess ruffled many feathers. The poor people of France blamed Marie Antoinette for their poverty. Her spending helped incite the French Revolution. And after much public outcry, in 1793 she quite literally lost her head because of it. Whether she was blameless or guilty is debatable, but Marie Antoinette remains woven into the fabric of history and popular culture.By Priscilla Stuckey. 2012
"Dissatisfaction with nature flows throughout Western civilization, as deep as its blood, as abiding as its bones. Convinced to the…
marrow that something is deeply wrong with nature, . . . the Western world tries to remake it into something better."For Priscilla Stuckey, this is a fundamental and heartbreaking misconception: that nature can be fixed, exploited, or simply ignored. Modern societies try to bend nature to human will instead of engaging in give-and-take with a living, breathing land community.Using her personal experiences as the cornerstone, Stuckey explores the depth of relationship possible with the birch tree in our backyard, the nearby urban creek, the dog who settles on our bed each night.Drawing inspiration from sources as varied as ancient philosophers and contemporary biologists, Stuckey challenges readers to enact a different story of nature, one in which people and place are not separate, where other creatures respond to human need, and where humans and all others together create the world.With the eloquence of the great nature writers before her, Stuckey encourages us to open ourselves to the unlimited possibilities of a truly connected life.By Wendell Berry. 2012
First published in 1969 and out of print for more than twenty-five years, The Long-Legged House was Wendell Berry's first…
collection of essays, the inaugural work introducing many of the central issues that have occupied him over the course of his career. Three essays at the heart of this volume-"The Rise," "The Long-Legged House," and "A Native Hill" -are essays of homecoming and memoir, as the writer finds his home place, his native ground, his place on earth. As he later wrote, "What I stand for is what I stand on," and here we see him beginning the acts of rediscovery and resettling.By Martijn Van Calmthout. 2016
The first biography in English of a leading Dutch American physicist, who discovered the subatomic property of "spin" and spearheaded…
the search for Hitler's atom bomb as World War II came to an end.This engaging biography of an important Dutch physicist brings to light his significant scientific contributions and remarkable life story. Based on recently released archives and material from Goudsmit's daughter Esther, science journalist Martijn van Calmthout has reconstructed a life marked by both brilliance and tragedy.As a young man Sam Goudsmit came to international attention when he and a colleague published a seminal paper that introduced the property of electron spin into atomic theory. This discovery helped to remove remaining questions about atomic theory and brought him into contact with the likes of Einstein, Heisenberg, and other leading physicists of the early 20th century. In 1927, he was offered a position at the University of Michigan and moved with his wife to the United States. When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, Goudsmit, a Jew, feared for the lives of his parents and other family members still in Holland. His attempts to get his German colleague Werner Heisenberg to intervene on their behalf proved fruitless. Toward the end of World War II, he was recruited by the Department of Defense as the scientific leader of the co-called Alsos mission, whose task was to search for evidence of German atom-bomb development. The team eventually found stores of uranium ore and a nuclear reactor, among other evidence. While in Europe, Goudsmit had an opportunity to return to The Hague, his hometown. There in the rubble of his parent's house, he discovered that they had been deported to Auschwitz.After the war, he returned to the United States and became the editor of Physical Review and Physical Review Letters; the latter is a leading physics journal to this day. But guilt over his failure to save his parents haunted him for the rest of his life.This is a biography that in part reads like a thriller and restores long-overdue recognition to an important 20th-century physicist.By Adam Becker. 2018
The untold story of the heretical thinkers who dared to question the nature of our quantum universeEvery physicist agrees quantum…
mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr's students vigorously protected his legacy, and the physics community favored practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.By Alisa Jones. 2018
For readers of Nora Ephron, Tina Fey and Jenny Lawson, Gotham Girl Interrupted offers a hilarious, heartfelt, and fiercely candid…
memoir about life as a hapless writer, single parent, impassioned city girl, and epileptic."Smart, harrowing, heart-warming, and very funny." --James PattersonSmart stand-up comedy about the power of falling down, Gotham Girl Interrupted is loaded with brash truths and laugh-out-loud moments about the epileptic age and culture in which we all live. It's also a dispatch from the frontlines of neurodiversity. Above all, it's about the battle for becoming who you are supposed to be and finding your tribe--no matter how much flopping around on the ground and wetting yourself you have to do to get there.With wit and humility, Alisa Kennedy Jones chronicles her experiences after a diagnosis of ecstatic epilepsy (also suffered by Dostoevsky, Van Gogh, Da Vinci and Agatha Christie). Beginning with the first in a series of terrifying yet beautiful grand mal seizures, which she likens to "swallowing a bolt of lightning," each seizure leaves her with what Zen Buddhists sometimes refer to as a "beginner's mind"--a vast, open expanse of headspace, coupled with a creative euphoria. It's a state that renders you less encumbered by everything you've already learned, but also challenged by having to relearn some of the more basic aspects of daily life.By Vashti Harrison. 2018
From the New York Times bestselling author of Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History comes the highly anticipated follow-up,…
a beautifully illustrated collectible detailing the lives of women creators around the world.Featuring the true stories of 40 women creators, ranging from writers to inventors, artists to scientists, Little Dreamers: Visionary Women Around the World inspires as it educates. Readers will meet trailblazing women like Mary Blair, an American modernist painter who had a major influence on how color was used in early animated films, actor/inventor Hedy Lamar, environmental activist Wangari Maathai, architect Zaha Hadid, filmmaker Maya Deren, and physicist Chien-Shiung Wu. Some names are known, some are not, but all of the women had a lasting effect on the fields they worked in.The charming, information-filled full-color spreads show the Dreamers as both accessible and aspirational so reader knows they, too, can grow up to do something amazing.By James R. Hansen. 2005
La vida del primer hombre que pisó la Luna y la historia del hito que marcó la humanidad y la…
carrera espacial. Cuando el Apolo 11 aterrizó en la Luna en 1969, el primer hombre en dejar su huella en la superficie se convirtió en leyenda. Basado en material exclusivo compuesto por más de cincuenta horas de grabaciones privadas con Neil Armstrong, documentos personales y entrevistas con familiares cercanos, James Hansen logra una magnífica panorámica de la segunda mitad del siglo XX además de elaborar una biografía inigualable sobre uno de los protagonistas incontestables de la historia reciente. En una penetrante exploración del culto al héroe estadounidense, Hansen aborda el complejo legado del Primer Hombre, como astronauta y como individuo. En este libro, la intimidad, la ciencia y la épica se entremezclan para formar el retrato de un héroe rebelde que siempre será conocido como el viajero espacial más famoso de la historia. La crítica ha dicho...«El historiador James Hansen combina hábilmente la saga de Armstrong con el trasfondo histórico de la introducción de América a la Era del Espacio. Un libro excelente.»Capitán James A. Lovell, comandante del Apolo 13 «Esta impresionante biografía, bien documentada y apasionantemente escrita, superará la prueba del inexorable paso del tiempo.»Library Journal «Una biografía poderosa e implacable de un hombre que es la personificación de la fuerza de carácter y la determinación cotidiana [...]. Una lectura obligada para los adoradores del mundo espacial y los lectores de historia por igual.»Publishers WeeklyBy Peter Bebergal. 2018
A journey through the attempts artists, scientists, and tinkerers have made to imagine and communicate with the otherworldly using various…
technologies, from cameras to radiowaves.Strange Frequencies takes readers on an extraordinary narrative and historical journey to discover how people have used technology in an effort to search for our own immortality. Bebergal builds his own ghostly gadgets to reach the other side, too, and follows the path of famous inventors, engineers, seekers, and seers who attempted to answer life's ultimate mysteries. He finds that not only are technological innovations potent metaphors keeping our spiritual explorations alive, but literal tools through which to experiment the boundaries of the physical world and our own psyches.Peter takes the reader alongside as he explores: * the legend of the golem and the strange history of automata; * a photographer who is trying to capture the physical manifestation of spirits; * a homemaker who has recorded voicemails from the dead; * a stage magician who combines magic and technology to alter his audience's consciousness; * and more.By Nancy Harrison, Patricia Brennan Demuth, Ted Hammond. 2013
Bill Gates, born in Seattle, Washington, in 1955, is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. In this Who…
Was...? biography, children will learn of Gates' childhood passion for computer technology, which led him to revolutionize personal computers. Through the success of his now-world-famous software company, Microsoft, Bill Gates became one of the wealthiest philanthropists in history.This fascinating story of a child technology genius is sure to captivate all audiences!By Dorion Sagan. 2012
Tireless, controversial, and hugely inspirational to those who knew her or encountered her work, Lynn Margulis was a scientist whose…
intellectual energy and interests knew no bounds. Best known for her work on the origins of eukaryotic cells, the Gaia hypothesis, and symbiogenesis as a driving force in evolution, her work has forever changed the way we understand life on Earth. When Margulis passed away in 2011, she left behind a groundbreaking scientific legacy that spanned decades. In this collection, Dorion Sagan, Margulis's son and longtime collaborator, gathers together the voices of friends and colleagues to remark on her life and legacy, in essays that cover her early collaboration with James Lovelock, her fearless face-off with Richard Dawkins during the so-called "Battle of Balliol" at Oxford, the intrepid application of her scientific mind to the insistence that 9/11 was a false-flag operation, her affinity for Emily Dickinson, and more. Margulis was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983, received the prestigious National Medal of Science in 1999, and her papers are permanently archived at the Library of Congress. Less than a month before her untimely death, Margulis was named one of the twenty most influential scientists alive - one of only two women on this list, which include such scientists as Stephen Hawking, James Watson, and Jane Goodall.By Seymour Diamond, Charlie Morey. 2015
Learn the story of a man who lived the American dream and improved the quality of life for thousands of…
headache sufferers.The Headache Godfather traces the life of Seymour Diamond, MD, who was born in 1925, the son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and Slovakia, in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Diamond revolutionized the practice of headache as a medical specialty when he opened the United States' first private headache practice, the Diamond Headache Clinic, in 1974. It quickly became a headache haven for sufferers from around the world. He also established a nonprofit organization, the National Headache Foundation, to support research for headache relief and to spread the knowledge among doctors and headache sufferers alike.At eighty-nine years of age, Dr. Diamond looks back on his battles with the Food and Drug Administration over headache treatments, the political skirmishes with those who would block his will to succeed, his globe-trotting adventures to learn and share current headache knowledge, the hundreds of thankful patients who claim that his headache treatment saved their lives, a frightening and painful malpractice lawsuit, and even a relationship with a Chicago Mafia member whose family Dr. Diamond treated early in his medical career, and who was ultimately found in the trunk of a stolen automobile, shot to death.Seymour Diamond is a living example of an individual who succeeded at living the American dream. Working several jobs while attending college and medical school, applying his intelligence, energy, and imagination to the world of headache medicine, and providing for his wife, Elaine, and their family of three daughters while building an empire of headache health, Seymour Diamond is indeed the Headache Godfather.